Review: Kenji Tanigaki's Enter the Fat Dragon.

Enter the Fat Dragon (Unrelated to Sammo Hung's film) is an action comedy film directed by Kenji Tanigaki and Aman Chang, and stars Donnie Yen, Teresa Mo, Nikki Chow, and film director Wong Jing.

The movie revolves around the Hong Kong Police Officer Fallon Chu (Yen), who's repeated chaos during cases leads to a break-up and a demotion, eventually finding himself out of shape and in Japan as he both faces off against the yakuza with former Hong Kong Police officer Thor (Wong Jing) and tries to get back with his ex (Nikki Chow).

Enter the Fat Dragon isn't really a good film, but it is a fun film. It's clear it doesn't take itself too seriously and I would suggest going into this film with the expectations of watching a really, really dumb movie.

Comedy is this film's main priority, then the action, then everything else, including actually being serious when it's needed. There are jokes nonstop and while it's no Leslie Nielsen film in terms of the amount of jokes, the amount is just enough that a lot of them just don't land and are rather intrusive.

There are moments in this film where you would expect them to drop the comedy for even a couple minutes, and when you think it's about to get serious...BAM! Joke! And it kills all tension the film had immediately.

Only a handful of times in this film does it actually get serious and even then it feels like they just want to get it over with and go back to being funny. There's no real tension, no real romance, and no real drama that makes me want to be invested in this film beyond the action and the comedy.

And don't get me wrong, when the comedy lands it lands and it's funny. Like, had me belly laughing kinda funny. The best gags in the movie comes from the action itself, much like a Jackie Chan movie during his prime. It's the simple stuff that's the funniest.

And like most comedy films, when a joke doesn't land it's painfully obvious. Downright unfunny and painfully cringey. There's a scene nearing the end of the film where Fallon and Chloe are confronting the yakuza boss and when he asks why she likes a fat guy like Fallon, they begin insulting the yakuza boss for being a skinny toothpick and it felt so just, shoehorned in that I just cringed hard at how awkward the scene got.

One last thing, I know it's a fat guy comedy but there's a lot of immature humor in this film. Fart jokes, nude guy jokes, getting hurt in the butt jokes, I mean getting bit the butt by a dog does work for a film like this, but the rest just feel so out of place.

For a guy as serious as Donnie Yen, an actor I never would really think of putting in a comedy film, he's actually really funny and pretty much the only good performance in this movie. Well maybe not the only good one, I think the rest of the cast did fine, but he is the only memorable performance out of everyone else. It's hard to compete with a fat Donnie Yen making Bruce Lee noises with a pair of nunchucks, it's something you just don't forget once you see it.

Really my only major complaints with this film is how fat Donnie Yen is. I'm not gonna be an American about it and complain he's not fat enough (he does kinda have a Kevin James build though), but his weight is an afterthought more or less in this film.

He's doing martial arts like it's nothing for an overweight 250 pound guy, not saying it's impossible at his weight but doing parkour, running long distances, and doing intense martial arts without running out of breath once after presumably not doing much physical activity during the time he was gaining weight is just, insane.

I do have to applaud the makeup crew for making Donnie Yen fat, though. Not only does the fat suit look pretty good, they also managed to make him look a solid 20 years younger. Don't know how they did it, but they did.

While there are many shortcomings to Enter the Fat Dragon, I found myself enjoying it a lot and I didn't really get why it was so hated, dislike sure but I definitely didn't find it the worst ever.

I would recommend this film to fans of fat guy comedy, martial arts comedy and a couple Donnie Yen fans.

That's all for now, Love and Peace!